New Eldritch Tomes

 

This summer a bump in liquid assets due to my advancing age coincided with the arrival of a catalogue in my email basket. Yes I did the mature thing and pondered whether I needed more books, Discussed it with Helen and and said hell yes what's two more given the thousands we have. And the catalogue did happen to contain relatively reasonably priced copies of two books I have wanted for years. (We all remember relatively from school, things appear different depending on where you sit, I think that's how it goes) Yes these are Derleth, but as I discussed in an earlier post when I began reading the mythos I made little distinction between HPL and his various imitators and collaborators. In truth it was hard to get books we could afford in Windsor in those days we took what we found in the drugstore racks, used book stores, and Coles. And opened the covers with eager anticipation, besides we thought Twinkies were food. (oh wait I still do)

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2019/10/wilum-hopfrog-pugmire-may-3-1051-march_27.html

Besides these are by one of the greatest cover artists every to grace Arkham House publications, Richard Taylor and they just happen to complete my collection of the five titles he did for them. And while you can debate the quality of some of Derleth stories "The Fisherman of Falcons Point" in The Shuttered Room and "The Seal of R'lyeh" in The Mask of Cthulhu are two of my favourite Derleth stories.

I knew Taylor was a cartoonist for the New Yorker but I did not realize he was Canadian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Taylor_(cartoonist)

Dreams has a wondrous cover, don't you think.

New Eldritch Tomes (not really) and Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams and Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country

 I wanted to put a post together and was waiting to gather some things I wanted to share. First off I have not been buying as many old paperbacks lately. I basically have accumulated lots and decided to hold off for a while. However will searching the basement for Blaylock's The Elfin Ship for another project, I found two books that really belonged upstairs with my main collection. Initially I assumed that The Phoenix Tree was part of Lin Carter's Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, it must have been the unicorns and dragons that fooled me. However the authors on the cover had a distinctly weird tales or horror vibe. I have been collected a number of slim horror collections from the 1970's and this Stoker collection for 1974 by Quartet Books fit right in. 

I also wanted to mention a couple items that I thought would be of interest to readers of this blog. The first is a documentary I just watched on Vimeo, Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams directed by Darin Coelho Spring. Smith is a favourite author and I thought this was a great overview of his life and career. It featured a number of tours by Smith scholar, Donald Sidney-Fryer. There were interviews with S.T. Joshi, W.H. Pugmire, and an extensive interview with Harlan Ellison on Smith's influence on his work. Ellison also mentions how he first encountered Smith's "City of the Singing Flame" in Derleth anthology  The Other Side of the Moon. I found the interview with Smith's stepson Prof. William Dorman particularly interesting. The documentary also featured some of Smith's painting and sculptures and I have to admit I has really impressed. The b&w reproductions in my copy of The Fantastic Art of Clark Ashton Smith did not do them justice and led me to undervalue them.

Author John Langan reviewed the documentary for Locus here,

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/john-langan-reviews-clark-ashton-smith-the-emperor-of-dreams/

And you can see the trailer here, (I really recommend it)

 https://vimeo.com/281911751

Lastly I want to recommend Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country by Edward Parnell and I am only on chapter eight. (Finished, a powerful but poignant (okay sad) memoir)

Parnell has written a beautiful and engaging memoir combining his personal history with an overview of the supernatural fiction and film that informed his childhood. Parnel's discussions of the works of authors like Machen, Blackwood. M.R. James, Alan Garner and William Hope Hodgson and films like The Wicker Man or The Blood on Satan's Claw are enhanced by visits to significant locations in their creators' lives and works. 

Readers of W.G. Sebald (who I love) may recognize some similarities. There are b&w photographs of the author and his family or the locations he visits. The work consists of descriptions of trips interspersed with personal anecdotes, capsule histories, observation of the local birds and the landscape.

But I think Parnell is more deeply immersed in his subject than Sebald sometimes was. This process seems vitally important to Parnell. His visits to the locations where these authors lived and worked become meditations on his own life and a trigger for his own memories. I have mentioned before that Helen is a big fan of The Fortean Times. One phenomenon which she made me aware of was the concept of The Haunted Generation, as mentioned in the link below; 

" The phrase ‘Haunted Generation’ comes from an article of that title by British broadcaster and writer Bob Fischer for the June 2017 issue of Fortean Times magazine, the purview of which is ‘the world of strange phenomena’. Fischer, who was born in 1973, discusses his childhood exposure to a popular culture thematically preoccupied with mysticism and the supernatural;"   

From 

‘A LOST, HAZY DISQUIET’: SCARFOLK, HOOKLAND, AND THE ‘HAUNTED GENERATION’ by David Sweeny

 

http://www.revenantjournal.com/contents/a-lost-hazy-disquiet-scarfolk-hookland-and-the-haunted-generation/

A link to the actual Fortean Times article is here.

https://hauntedgeneration.co.uk/2019/04/22/thehauntedgeneration/

I think Parnell's work provides an interesting example of the phenomenon. I have found it riveting not just for his discussions of supernatural fiction in Britain but also as an exercise in memoir.    

There is a excellent discussion of Parnell's book with an interview with the author here. Parnell states,

"I went back to Norfolk and thought hard about whether I would like to write such a book – a book concerned with ghost stories and films and the places around Britain that fed into them. And I decided that I did. Because I’d grown up obsessed from a young age with the supernatural and horror. Like a lot of children born in the 1970s, my early years had been surrounded by morbid public information films and terrifying, offbeat TV programmes aimed at, but quite probably unsuitable for, our age group; without knowing it, I was part of what the Fortean Times has come to term the ‘haunted generation’."

https://folkhorrorrevival.com/2019/12/27/ghostland-review-and-interview-with-edward-parnell/

Cover credits;

The Bram Stoker Companion unattributed

The Phoenix Tree unattributed

Genius Loci Frank Wakefield

A Rendezvous in Averoigne Jeffrey K. Potter

The Other Side of the Moon Virgil Finlay?

Emperor of Dreams Ned Dameron

New Eldritch Tomes

 

I am working on some posts that will hopefully be a bit more substantive but as often happens when the world is too much with me I have retreated to the mythos and H.P. Lovecraft. Often that means I identify some more items to add the vast, already unreadable mass of books squelching around the forgotten spaces and hidden corners of the house. So here they are sitting on the Eldritch Horror game board we really need to start playing before the massive kickstarter version of Etherfields shows up. 

The Grimscribe's Puppets a homage to the works of Thomas Ligotti, cover by Daniele Serra.

So far I have only read "Furnace" by Livia Llewellyn which appears to be a tribute to the stories that appeared in Ligotti's In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land collection about a northern town. "Furnace" is brilliant, one of the most evocatively written things I have read in a long time. It's ethos is Ligotti but descriptively I also thought of the darker works of Ray Bradbury. Wow.

Dead But Dreaming 2, the cover is unattributed. The first Dead But Dreaming was great. "Salt Air" by Mike Minnis was worth the cover price. Dead But Dreaming 2 has stories by some of my favourite mythos authors, Don Webb, Darrell Schweitzer, W. H. Pugmire, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Will Murray how could I resist.

Fungi, cover by Oliver Wetter, as a William Hope Hodgson fan this was a must.

The Lurking Chronology A Timeline of the Derleth Mythos, cover by Steve Santiago.

Phantasmagoria, cover by Douglas Klauba

New Eldritch Tomes

Every time I think I am done adding Arkham House volumes I see something, in this case two somethings, that I cannot resist. I have not read any of Vincent Starrett's weird fiction. His name popped up on my radar recently as I was reading about Sherlock Holmes and the pastiche industry generated by Doyle's character. But since Im love Homes and weird tales I added this to my library.

From the Wikipedia article on Starrett, "Starrett's most famous work, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, was published in 1933. Following that, Starrett wrote a book column, "Books Alive," for The Chicago Tribune. He retired after 25 years of the column in 1967. Starrett was one of the founders of The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic), a Chicago chapter of The Baker Street Irregulars."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Starrett

The same bookseller had a couple of other items I was interested in so the order got bigger. I love Donald Wandrei and poetry so how could I resist Poems for Midnight. Both Arkham House books have covers by Frank Utpatel one of my favourite Arkham House cover artists.

These Ballantine editions with covers by John Homes were the Lovecraft books I started reading as a teenager. I did not keep them when I graduated to the hardcovers Arkham House put out in the late 1980's. So now that I have decided I would like copies I can enjoy tracking down and buying vastly more expensive used copies. Other titles appear here.

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2018/11/new-eldritch-tomes-saskatoon-2018.html

The last book in this order A Man Called Poe: Stories in the Vein of Edgar Allan Poe (cover by Josh Kirby) contained among other items the short story "In Which an Author and His Character Are Well Met"  by Vincent Starrett. Isn't this were we came in maybe but we are not quite done.

Not quite Helen and I finally went out Friday to the Inglewood neighbourhood where we like to shop. The stores were finally open again. A building that was a mere frame the last time we were there was almost finished, it has been a long time. At The Next Page bookstore which, sells both new and used books I was able to find a number of horror anthologies, something I rarely encounter. The covers were a bit scrapped up but at $4 each I was delighted to give them a home. 

I could not find the cover artist for these two books but I would love to know. 

New Eldritch Tomes Lovecraft and Ian Miller Part Two

I have always wanted at least one paperback with an Ian Miller's cover for the Panther Horror editions of the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Eventually I tracked down a copy on ABE which seemed affordable, in theory. I ordered it March 30th from Australia but stuff was happening and I received it today. I was delighted.

A lovely reminiscence of reading these editions and much better cover photos of all three titles can be found here.

https://unsubscribedblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/teeces-bit-a-shadow-over-rotherham/

Some time ago I discussed my purchase of The Art of Ian Miller here. 

https://ajaggedorbit.blogspot.com/2020/06/new-arrivals-philip-k-dick-and-ian.html

In this book he offered an alternative cover illustration for The Haunter of the Dark. 

Photo above from The Art of Ian Miller

https://ajaggedorbit.blogspot.com/search?q=ian+miller

Miller's explanation.

This French edition of  The Case of Charles Dexter Ward arrived some time ago. 

I am a Canadian but I do not speak or read French. My adult self might tell my rather unambitious younger self that learning other languages would be way more valuable than 90% of the curriculum especially the woefully inaccurate and outdated information on other countries the geography teacher dispensed. Okay I got that out of my system. So why buy this? I have read The Case of Charles Dexter Ward a number of times, and each time I rank it higher among Howard's works. But I have never seem a cover that did justice to the mood of the story until now. This representation of Joseph Curwen, in my mind, looking like he is becoming more and more bestial as he advances farther and farther into his dark arts is brilliant. What do you think?

New Eldritch Tomes, HPL, Caitlin R. Kieran and Ian Miller

I got a couple of new used books from Abe as well as a new purchase I wanted to share. The first is this SFBC collection with a cover by Ian Miller. I cannot understand why who ever did the layout of the back cover butchered the Miller illustration to include the ISBN box rather than rearranging the elements. May they have an unfortunate encounter with Shub-Niggurath (The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young). I had literally been eyeing this copy for years. One thing I ask myself is do I need another HPL collection, the answer is often yes. I am a sucker for art work so Miller was a huge plus but I am happy to say the editor Andrew Wheeler rewarded my purchase with a short one page dream piece "What the Moon Brings" which I do not remember reading before. 

"So I watched the tide go out under that sinking moon, and saw gleaming the spires, the towers, and the roofs of that dead, dripping city. And as I watched, my nostrils tried to close against the perfume-conquering stench of the world's dead; for truly, in this unplaced and forgotten spot had all the flesh of the churchyards gathered for puffy sea-worms to gnaw and glut upon." (395) 

Yes Howard really hated sea food. The tone of this story really brought to mind another moon related passage I had just read in his essay "In Defence of Dagon" 

"Romanticists are persons, who on the one hand scorn the realist who says that moonlight is only reflected wave-motion in the aether: but who on the other hand sit stolid and unmoved when a fantaisiste tells them that the moon is a hideous nightmare eye-watching ... ever watching..." (147)

I was looking for a copy of  Caitlin R. Kieran's short story, "The Daughter of the Four Pentacles". The same vender had Thrillers 2 a signed limited edition with that story and Kieran's "Houses Under the Sea. " so the die was cast.

 

When the pandemic began my wife and I purchased a couple of gift cards from a locally owned bookstore we frequent. Yesterday we ventured out masked and sanitized to see what they had. I had checked their online catalogue so I knew what I wanted. Helen got Monsters and Myths: Surrealism & War in the 1930s and 1940s, which I discussed briefly here. 

https://ajaggedorbit.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-arrivals.html

I got of course, was there any doubt, The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham edited by Leslie S. Klinger. I have volume one but Klinger restricted that volume to works that mentioned Arkham, the Miskatonic river valley or Miskatonic University. This excluded some of my favourite works. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, "The Strange High House in the Mist:, "The Outsider, The Rats in the Walls", "The Lurking Fear" etc. And here they are. What no "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" I know it was cowritten with E. Hoffmann Price, but Price admits he was just nudging Lovecraft to get him to write it and that the story was Lovecraft's. 

We also have an introduction by Victor LaValle the author of the mythos related work, "The Ballard of Black Tom". I have LaValle's book on my kindle but I have not read it yet, I certainly will. So I will refer interested readers to the review of this book  at The Great Lovecraft ReRead. 

https://www.tor.com/2016/02/17/book-reviews-later-the-ballad-of-black-tom-by-victor-lavalle/

LaValle's introduction was interesting reading. He discussing finding and enjoying Lovecraft's as a ten year old only to realize at 15 that as a young black man he could not accept the racism in Lovecraft's writing. It is a perfectly understandable reaction. I did want to quote one passage from the introduction because I think it frames my experience with genre literature and why I think I still read science fiction, weird tales, Sherlock Holmes related works and the like. "Ten year old me was here for all of it: the high anxiety, waves of madness, and the terror of human insignificance. Certain writers must be encountered at a young age or else their spell will never be cast properly. Some people would say this is because an older reader has matured out of the appeal such pulp provides, but I call bullshit on that. Instead, I would say that as a child the aperture of your imagination is wide open. In adulthood we call its closure "maturity" but it hardly seems like a triumph to me. Instead, I try to embrace the bravery of such openness...," (xii) I am also trying to retain this openness since it is still the source of much of my joy, whether it is in the literature I read, my experience of the natural world or the observations we share with each other during a quiet walk or meal out with my wife. 

I have shared my own thoughts on Lovecraft's racism here.

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-real-shadow-over-innsmouth-odd.html

Now to the book itself. One; the cover illustration, Jacket design Steve Attardo, Jacket Art by Christina Mrozik, is one of the most striking covers based on one of Lovecraft;'s stories I have ever seen. Rats and cats, does it get better. Last night I read "The Outsider" and the accompanying annotations. I found Klinger's annotations helpful, the ones I liked were those that referred to other work that could be seen as related to this story, a poem by Hawthorne for example. But some of the most interesting referred me to critical interpretations of Lovecraft's story. I could see both types as rekindling my interest in new works in the canon and also items within my own collection that I want to revisit. 

New Eldritch Tomes, Ron Weighell, Manly Wade Wellman, Ramsey Campbell

I noticed The White Road on my favourite bookseller's homepage. That copy was sold but he was good enough to track down a copy for me, he had been reading it. He did say it was quite good and that Weighell should be better known. My wife and I were both working in archaeology when we meet and while we left the field we still follow it avidly. So an Egyptian themed cover will always catch my eye. I am also a fan of Victorian and Edwardian horror and modern works that mine that vein are grist for my mill. (sorry) The comments on Goodreads helped convince me I wanted a copy. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9751496-the-white-road

Two anthologies edited by Ramsey Campbell, from the collection of Hugh Lamb another horror anthologist. New Terrors Volume 2 is inscribed "for Hugh, who knows how difficult these things are! Very best from Ramsey 24/10/80''

Cover by Andrew Douglas.

But want really interested me was the number of authors I associate with science fiction that are represented in the work. Christopher Priest (''The Miraculous Cairn''), John Brunner (''The Man Whose Eyes Beheld The Glory''), Greg Bear (''Richie By The Sea'') and M. John Harrison (''The Ice Monkey''). 

The Far Reaches of Fear, includes Manly Wade Wellman's The Petey Car which I wanted to read, as well as stories by Fritz Leiber, R. A. Lafferty, Brian Lumley, Robert Aickman and Campbell himself.

Cover by Terry Oakes.

Lastly Shadowridge Press put out a new edition of the Carcosa volume of Wellman's Worse Things Waiting with the Lee Brown Coye illustrations. I am iffy on Lee Brown Coye (heresy) but I really enjoy Wellman and the price was right for an old retired duffer. 

New Eldritch Tomes and Vintage Horror Paperbacks (The Pan Book of Horror Stories Series)

I have wanted to add some copies of The Pan Book of Horror Stories series to my library for some time. Recently I received volumes 1-3, 7  from a UK bookseller and I was delighted with the wonderfully atmospheric covers. 

But I did not want to do a simple show and tell post. With everything that is going on I have not put together a more in-depth post for some time. However I did want to discuss at least one story from vol 1. "W.S." by L.P.Hartley. Hartley is possibly best remembered today for the quote, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” from his novel The Go-Between. However he wrote a number of stories of interest to weird fiction fans. Many were collected in the Arkham House collection, The Travelling Grave and Other Stories. "W.S." does not appear in this collection. But it has been reprinted a number of times including an appearance in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1952, which can be located at The Luminist Periodical Archives, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Weird Fiction (link below). "W.S" is the story of the novelist Walter Streeter who begins to receive a series of rather cryptic postcards signed only W.S.. While they seem somewhat enigmatic, they do include rather pointed questions about his work and how it can be seen as a reflection on his personality. The horror here is not overt but rather understated, possibly more modern than much of the pulp style fiction of the era including other work by Hartley that I have read. If I could make a comparison I would suggest some glancing similarities to the work of the brilliant writer Jonathan Carroll who I heartily recommend. 

 http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/

I procured vols. 8 and 12 in Calgary, some time ago, from the now sadly defunct Cabin Fever Books but the covers just do not have the same cache for me. One problem is I just do not like covers utilizing photographs as much. 

 

I have also been reading the posts and ogling the covers on Uncle Doug's Bunker of Vintage Horror Paperbacks. The site does not appear to have been updated since 2015 but since nothing on it is remotely time sensitive it is still fun viewing for fans of the the paperbacks of this era. 

"Hi! This is my attempt at starting a small blog about, what is in my eyes, the golden age of Horror Anthology Paperbacks and a huge passion of mine. Update: I've realized that what is even more important is the people have to be made aware of these wonderful stories before they disappear forever. Most the the stories I mention here haven't been reprinted in over 40 years and most likely will never been seen again. They will be lost to us once these books are gone and forgotten. How sad."

http://uncledougsbunkerofhorror.blogspot.com/

I do think the sheer number of books pictured on this blog, and the fact that my room and display space is filling up means that my collecting as such will slow down. 

Cover credits

Pan Book of Horror Stories, cover unattributed

Second, S. R. Boldero

Third, W. F. Phillipps

Seventh, cover unattributed

Eighth, cover unattributed

Twelfth, cover unattributed  

NewNew Eldritch Tomes, Richard Powers, Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber

Anyone who has followed my blogs will know that science fiction and weird tale/horror illustration is an area of real interest to me. I also love the slim horror anthologies and collections that appeared in the 1950's/1960's/1970's. So I could not resist these especially as Bloch and Leiber were part of Lovecraft's circle and fine writers in their own right. I have not been able to identify the cover artist of The Living Demons, isn't it lovely. But the rest are by Richard Powers, in a class by himself yet again. I have provided links below to other posts featuring Powers covers. I also enjoy seeing the advertisements on the back with other titles I might look for. I would love to know which is your favourite cover. Please enjoy. 

  

    

    

Not a new arrival but when I saw Invisible Men included both Basil Davenport as editor and Richard Powers as cover artists I had to include it. 

  

Pervious links to Powers Covers.

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2016/04/horror-anthologies-and-art-of-richard.html

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2016/05/horror-anthologies-art-of-richard.html

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2016/05/horror-anthologies-art-of-richard.html